


Flight Of The Commodore

by ElphieRix



Series: Horrible Coping Mechanisms For The End Of The World [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, But I Love Tony So If You Don't Like Him Don't Bother It Will Just Make Both Of Us Sad, But This Is Primarily About The Friendships, Canon Compliant Until Avengers 4 Comes Out, Drinking to Forget, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everyone's hurting, Grief Bonding, I Really Love Tony Stark So Jot That Down, Like This Is Val's Fic, Lots Of Relationships I Haven't Tagged Are Mentioned But They Really Are Only Mentions, Nebula Needs Some New Friends, Night Terrors, Other, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sort of a fix-it, The Ships Aren’t Unimportant Here, Tony Needs Some New Friends, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Valkyrie Needs Some New Friends, first in a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 19:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14722205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElphieRix/pseuds/ElphieRix
Summary: Finding Heimdall is a blow. She had sensed a memory of his seiðr near the hole in the ship and had hoped faintly that he got away.Finding Loki is worse. He is the last body she brings in and it wasn’t like the something she had occasionally seen in his sharp smiles had meant anything, had ever gone anywhere. Still finding his body, shattered and twisted at the neck, is unquestionably the worst.There is no sign of Thor or the Hulk. Of course that could mean many things, almost none of them good, and Valkyrie hates the bubbling hope fizzing in her fingertips. I’m going to cry now, she thinks, I’ve done enough and now I get to-A man’s scream echoes from the direction of the medbay.-Valkyrie goes back to the Asgardian ship to check for survivors and finds those from a different slaughter.ORVal and Tony and Nebula's sad space road trip.





	Flight Of The Commodore

Their distress beacon is still sounding. The _Commodore_ picks it up as Valkyrie flies back in her stubborn search for survivors. Korg had argued against it, had nearly convinced her to stay and wait until they could regroup on Earth, but then Korg had crumbled to ash along with half of the remaining Asgardians and Valkyrie had to go back. She is technically Queen now and, well, fuck that. If there was the slightest chance the King had survived he was going to lead his people; she was going to make him lead his people. What was left of his people anyway.

 

Their ship still hangs in the void, right where she left it, but now there’s a great hole in the hull and wreckage and - _oh Hel_ \- bodies drifting in the surrounding darkness. Valkyrie knows battlefields, knows what it is to look out upon the remains of a slaughter and know you survived. But this isn’t a battlefield, there are no words for what this is. Memories of another massacre cloud her vision and her chest gets tight and she can’t breathe and how stupid is it that she’s the one who can’t breathe when it’s Sigrún, her shield sister, her lover, with the blade through her breast and they lost how could they lose -but no, now isn’t the time for that.

 

Now is the time to scan for threats. Someone, maybe multiple someones, using a Ravager frequency was here, but Valkyrie thinks they’ll be long gone by now. There’s not much to plunder from dead refugees after all.

 

Now is the time to work out how to retrieve the people floating in space. She doesn’t know what the Grandmaster would have used Rebreathers for on his orgy ship, but she finds two dozen locked up in a cupboard with a wealth of other... items she would have been very excited about in different circumstances. For some reason she thinks of Loki. She locks the cupboard behind her and clutches the Rebreather so tightly her knuckles go white.

 

Before she sets foot on the other ship, Valkyrie gets drunk. The only liquor left on the _Commodore_ after her long solitary journey back tastes like pisswater, but it does the trick. Everything is bathed in a warm haze and it feels like she is experiencing the universe through a thick wad of cotton. Perfect.

 

It is awkward and irritating connecting the _Commodore_ to the larger ship. Valkyrie remembers that it always was and she wonders how she could forget that detail so quickly. She wonders what else she has forgotten, more as a distraction than anything else as she picks her way through the ruined vessel. Over every corpse she whispers a prayer and hopes it is enough even as she knows it is not.

 

Finally she reaches the hole. It has sucked the insides of the ship outside like blood bursting from an artery and though she knew what it would look like she still chokes back a scream. She promises herself once she has completed this task she will scream for a month, for a decade, for the rest of her life if she has to. But first she must tether herself to the side of the ship and, one by one, bring every broken piece of Asgard home. Over time she almost picks up a routine: kick off from the hull in the vague direction of a nearby piece of debris, shove it away if it’s nothing, hold it tight and pull it in if it’s a body. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do with them all, but she can’t, she just can’t, leave them in the coldness of space. If Asgard is a people and not a place, then Valkyrie isn’t going to leave any remainder of Asgard alone in the dark.

 

Finding Heimdall is a blow. She had sensed a memory of his seiðr near the hole and had hoped faintly that he got away.

 

Finding Loki is worse. He is the last body she brings in and it wasn’t like the something she had occasionally seen in his sharp smiles had meant anything, had ever gone anywhere. Still finding his body, shattered and twisted at the neck, is unquestionably the worst.

 

There is no sign of Thor or the Hulk. Of course that could mean many things, almost none of them good, and Valkyrie hates the bubbling hope fizzing in her fingertips. _I’m going to cry now,_ she thinks, _I’ve done enough and now I get to-_

 

A man’s scream echoes from the direction of the medbay and she is running before it is over. Her footsteps and her heartbeat thud _please please please_ as she stumbles after the sound.

 

It is not Thor in the medbay. This part of the ship is still airtight so the people raiding their medical supplies are unmasked. One is a dark haired man laid out on the bed. His face is contorted and his eyes closed in pain. Something on his chest glows strange and blue and from the wound in his side and the pallor of his skin he might be dying. The woman standing next to him, not quite close enough to be described as at his side, Valkyrie knows by reputation.

 

“Thanossdottir,” she hisses, rage and hate and vengeance curdling in her gut.

 

The man’s eyes snap open at the sound of her voice and Valkyrie has to look away. They’re brown and clever and completely fucking empty. “You’re Asgardian,” he says, voice strained. “You know Thor.”

 

“I knew him,” she replies, to buy herself time. This man is with Nebula, child of Thanos, and yet his tone when he mentioned Thor was not that of an enemy. The hands she had balled into fists at her sides relax slightly.

 

“Thor too huh,” the man replies dully and even though she does not want to she looks at him again. He looks like she feels. Like another loss is overwhelming and yet just the latest in a long, long list. “I didn’t wanna believe it.”

 

“You’re dying, Stark,” says Nebula.

 

Something better than hope flutters in Valkyrie’s chest. Purpose. She can save someone today and the thought almost leaves her breathless.

 

“No.”

 

She rushes to the cupboards they hadn’t had a chance to clear in the evacuation. If she remembers rightly- and yes! There’s a roll of synthetic skin and a tub of healing salve. She whispers a rune to activate the ointment and passes it to the man, who eyes it with more interest than suspicion.

 

“Just... rub it on,” Valkyrie says, a little awkwardly. “Then put this on, like a bandage.” She holds up the roll of skin. Something flickers in the man’s expression, Stark was it? Something flickers in Stark’s expression, before the emptiness overwhelms it and she has to look away again.

 

She looks at Nebula. The cyborg is staring at the man with a steady gaze that could almost be mistaken for concerned. Her fingers twitch as he applies the salve.

 

“So I guess we’re even now,” he says. His tone is casual with a hint of slyness in a way that makes her heart ache with the memory of Loki.

 

“We’re not even until I say we’re even,” says Nebula furiously. “It was the Asgardian’s medicine that saved you.”

 

“I would have done it for nothing you know.”

 

“That’s why I have to repay you!” Nebula is even angrier now. “And it is not for you to say how much my body is worth!”

 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” says Stark, synthetic skin sticking to his fingers as he struggles to place it over his wound. “I just- I needed the distraction as much as you needed the repairs.”

 

Nebula visibly deflates, and Valkyrie remains silent, leaning against the medical cabinets and crossing her arms as she tries to puzzle them out.

 

“This is a distraction,” says Nebula quietly, as if she is admitting a terrible secret. Stark looks at her sharply and seems to come to an understanding with whatever he finds in her expression.

 

“Alright,” says Valkyrie, when it becomes clear that Stark and Nebula have nothing left to say to each other and the man is poking at his now covered wound in a curious way that cannot possibly be good for his healing. “So she owes you and now you owe me.” Nebula tenses at that, but Stark just looks at her in the same way he had regarded his injury and the medicine she had given him, intrigued but biting back his questions. “You can repay me by explaining why you’re robbing my ship.”

 

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” says Stark, almost wryly, indicating his side with hands that are still bloody.

 

Valkyrie quirks an eyebrow at him and he raises his hands in placation.

 

“Our ship is damaged. Our medical supplies were destroyed. We came aboard looking for medicine and spare parts. We thought everyone was dead,” says Nebula before Stark can say anything else.

 

Every one of Valkyrie’s thousands of years of life settles upon her shoulders. “They are,” she manages to say, and her voice doesn’t sound nearly as weak as she feels. “I came back to search for survivors.”

 

“Bruce said Asgard was destroyed but-“

 

“Bruce Banner?” She’s interrupting him before she realises it. “Midgardian Bruce Banner?”

 

“Little guy, sometimes gets very big? Hulk smash?”

 

She actually laughs then, a harsh brittle sound, a mixture of hysteria and relief that someone out there might not be dead. “Do you know if he... faded?” She asks, bracing herself for another loss.

 

His eyes go empty again but for some reason he tries to keep his voice light, “No. Last I saw him was on Earth. He was experiencing some... performance issues.”

 

Valkyrie doesn’t bother to try and work out what that means. She’s going to Earth anyway, if Bruce is alive she’ll see him and if not she won’t.

 

“I’m going to burn this ship,” she tells them. “I have some people I need to recover but then I’m burning this ship and heading to Earth.”

 

“If you won’t let us take what we need before you-“ Nebula starts.

 

Stark interrupts before the cyborg dooms them both. “I don’t suppose we could hitch a ride?”

 

Valkyrie knows she’d made the decision to help them the second Stark had mentioned Thor, so she nods once and turns away quickly. She heads back towards Loki’s body, she’ll take him and Heimdall to Midgard and if the King is alive he’ll thank her for it. Soon she realises that she is going far too fast for Stark, wounded as he is, to follow and she deliberately slows her step. It’s easier to think when she is not looking at his empty eyes. They reflect back at her all her grief and sorrow and guilt and she aches with that enough already.

 

“Hey,” he calls from down the corridor and she turns back to look at him. His face is creased in pain and Nebula is glaring at her as she supports him. “I should at least know the name of my interstellar taxi driver.”

 

“Valkyrie” she says, and some foolish thing possesses her to walk back and let him lean on her instead. Nebula blinks when she does but passes his weight over without comment.

 

“I’m Tony. Tony Stark.”

 

Valkyrie remembers Thor and Bruce talking about a Tony. Apparently this man is a great warrior and even greater scientist. Right now he doesn’t look like a great anything, just ill.

 

“The Man of Iron,” she mutters mostly to herself but he laughs at that, a horrible hollow laugh that scrapes at the insides of her skull and makes her want to drop him.

 

“Fucking Iron Man,” he says with loathing, his breathing laboured. “That’s a fucking joke.”

 

Valkyrie doesn’t know how to respond but Nebula says with a shake of her head and the faint whirr of her machinery “You made him bleed. He had the power of four stones and you made him bleed.”

 

Stark says nothing and just hangs his head in what looks like shame.

 

They don’t say anything as she takes them to the _Commodore_ and leaves to retrieve Loki and Heimdall. Nebula looks mutinous but Valkyrie can tell Stark won’t let them leave without her.

 

She cries a bit then, hunched over Loki’s body with his cold hand clutched in her own. It isn’t a very satisfying cry and she doesn’t feel better for it, but when she’s done she is able to drag the two bodies back to her ship. She leaves them in the hold.

 

When she gets to the _Commodore’s_ cockpit Stark is unconscious and Nebula is sharpening a knife on her own metal leg. It’s a move obviously designed to intimidate her but Valkyrie can’t bring herself to care. A numbness has set itself into her core and it is all she can do to concentrate on the next task and the next until she finally meets one she cannot finish and she can die trying.

 

The next task is to set the ship's one escape pod to drive right into the big ship’s engines and blow the whole thing up. It’s the best she can do to give half of Asgard a proper funeral. She says the funeral words as the explosion blooms in the darkness and Nebula stands next to her silently but for the constant noise of her mechanical parts. Valkyrie doesn’t know if the rites are the same anymore, she spent so long away from home, but she does what she can with what she has.

 

Then it’s sleep. This is not a fast ship over long distances and it can’t take frequent jumps so once she plugs in the coordinates for Earth there’s nothing to do but sleep. And of course there are nightmares.

 

Valkyrie has the same dream with new faces. Hela stands over her and laughs as ThorLokiSigrúnKorgHeimdallBruce runs into the same blade again and again and again, willingly giving her time to run away but she wastes it and the last thing she sees as Hela runs her through is their disappointment.

 

Nebula doesn’t sleep much, she just sits and sharpens her knives.

 

Stark screams in his sleep. The name Peter is most often on his lips but he sobs for a Pepper and a Rhodey frequently too. There are other names, and Valkyrie likes to think she can tell how he feels about each person by the ways he cries their name. He loves Pepper and Rhodey and Peter, that much is obvious, but names like Steve and Obie are more difficult. Sometimes she is sure they are family, sometimes she thinks he fears them.

 

Valkyrie makes an unplanned stop at an unnamed port to pick up more alcohol. She can’t finish this trip sober. Nebula glowers as she brings it aboard but Stark seems relieved.

 

They get drunk together every day. At first it’s just her and Stark, who has a frighteningly high tolerance for a mortal, but soon they are joined by Nebula. It’s astonishing how much of a lightweight Nebula is. Every time she passes out Stark claims he finds it charming and Valkyrie rolls her eyes. It gets familiar.

 

One night, Stark is among the disappointed faces in her dream and the next day she tells him about the fall of the Valkyrior. They had never talked about anything real before then, however drunk they got, and part of her is afraid of his reaction, but he just pats her hand and talks about how he once set his lab on fire making something called an omelette.

 

Surprisingly, it is Nebula who opens up next. Valkyrie and Tony listen in horror as Nebula tells them of her childhood and her sister in a hoarse whisper as they fly past a dying star. Valkyrie tells of how she met the Hulk on Sakaar and Tony makes the story of the Avengers’ first battle much funnier than it has any right to be, and never once mentions that they were fighting Loki.

 

And finally. Finally Tony tells them about Peter. He’s not his son. Tony tells them over and over again that Peter is not his son. Valkyrie and Nebula share a sceptical glance and Valkyrie wonders when they started doing that.

 

Peter is brave and good and young and dead. His last words were “I’m sorry”. In the days that come, Tony tells them of other old agonies, but none of them come close to the emptiness in his eyes when he talks about Peter.

 

It’s a sort of uneasy camaraderie. She doesn’t like Nebula, and Nebula doesn’t like her, but they understand one another. Neither of them understand Tony, but they both like him well enough. It works. They have a routine.

 

Every morning, one of them will wake the other two with their screams. Then, Valkyrie will take the ship through the one jump the _Commodore_ can manage a day. Then, they get drunk. They had tried other drugs a few times, but Nebula hadn’t felt anything and Tony’s heart had nearly given out. So they just got drunk.

 

Things change again when they are finally days, not weeks, away from Midgard. Valkyrie has been drinking alone. Nebula is off somewhere in the ship doing... something and Tony is building. The Grandmaster’s legendary entertainment system is no more, as is much of the tech Tony deemed non-essential to the continued functioning of the vessel. She doesn’t know what he hopes to achieve, but it seems to help distract him. They all need distractions. That is all they are doing on this ship, distracting themselves from the loss echoing around the universe.

 

It is in every port and refuelling station they come to. It is glaring, an open wound in nearly every person they meet. Apparent in every brief encounter they have, buying bread, buying fuel, buying booze. Across every world in every galaxy, the universe is mourning.

 

Valkyrie sighs. She can already tell it is going to be one of those days. The bad days. The days where she sits in the hold and stares at the bodies of Loki and Heimdall and doesn’t touch a drop of liquor while she’s down there. She puts it off for as long as she can. Sitting and drinking until she can stomach it no longer and she has to see them.

 

The hold is too warm, and the hum of the engines constant and needling, but the preservation spell on Loki and Hemidall’s corpses remains strong. It is the only light in the room, a faint golden glow casting strange shadows on the bodies below, sometimes almost making them look as if they are breathing. It is a cruel magic. She sits on a crate and stares at them, as is her custom on the bad days, letting the numbness well up inside her until she hardly feels real.

 

She doesn’t know how long she stays like that. For all she knows what she thinks of as the bad days are only minutes, or they could be years and she wouldn’t be any the wiser. She just stares and she just sits.

 

This bad day is different. For the first time Tony joins her, the blue glow from his chest and the gold of the preservation spell mixing to light the room a dim green. He doesn’t say anything, he only sits on the crate next to her and drinks shitty Xandarian wine. She shakes her head when he offers her the bottle.

 

Oddly enough, his presence is comforting, and it is not too long until she is ready to leave. But before she can say or do anything to that effect, Loki sits bolt upright and rips the blue glow - _he’d called it an arc reactor_ \- from Tony’s chest. The man falls back with a strangled cry but she is looking at Loki. Loki grasping the arc reactor with both hands as it grows brighter and brighter. Loki gasping and retching. Loki _alive alive alive_.

 

It takes time, but Loki comes back into himself, his breaths even out and his eyes lose their wildness. He coughs once, lightly, and stares at the arc reactor, still glowing unnaturally bright in his hands.

 

“My apologies Stark,” he says, and his voice is rough but still unmistakably Loki, “I needed a sufficiently powerful energy source and your heart shield did quite nicely. Of course it was supposed to be sunlight but this worked just as well.” He moves to hand the arc reactor back, but Tony is in no position to respond.

 

His right hand clutches desperately at his chest while his left arm hangs limply, as if he cannot use it. His breathing comes uneven and ragged and his whole form is trembling violently. For the first time since she met him Tony’s eyes aren’t empty, instead they are filled with sheer, unremitting, terror. Too late, Valkyrie remembers the night he had whispered of the friend, the father, who had torn the reactor from his chest and left him to die.

 

“Shit,” she says.

 

Loki stares at Tony in pure confusion, and the expression looks unfamiliar on his pointed face. He glances at her with something akin to helplessness and then back to Tony, who is now sobbing thickly in between shuddering breaths. If the situation had been different, that vulnerable, helpless look would have had something kindle in her chest, but she is too focused on Tony, who she has abruptly decided is not allowed to die.

 

She grabs the reactor from Loki’s pliant grasp with one hand and pulls up Tony’s shirt with the other. For a second she pauses. His torso is ruined. There is the not yet healed wound in side, but the real shock is his chest. It is a mass of scar tissue snaking out violently from the metal housing for the arc reactor. “Fuck me,” Valkyrie murmurs under her breath as she slots the blue glow back home.

 

Tony doesn’t seem to notice. His breathing is still frenzied and with her hand on the reactor she can feel how desperately his heart is beating.

 

“Stop it,” she says, like a child. “You’re not allowed to die on me.”

 

“He’s not dying,” says Loki, getting to his feet with some difficulty and swaying slightly where he stands. “He’s panicking.”

 

Valkyrie tries to think of what she used to do when Sigrún would panic like this, but it was so long ago and she’s spent all that time trying to forget that the memories slip away like water through fingers.

 

“I can take his mind away,” Loki continues. “Hopefully that will stop this.”

 

He reaches out and places a hand on Tony’s forehead. Immediately his eyes roll back into his head and he slumps, unconscious.

 

Valkyrie lets out a long shaky breath. Loki sits down heavily next to her with none of his usual grace. “If it’s all the same to you,” he says, “I’m going to pass out now.”

 

Things are different. The _Commodore_ is no longer a hearse with Loki living and breathing beside her. She hardly sees Tony anymore, he hides and he builds and sometimes the only indicator of his presence on the ship is the alcohol that disappears from the bar and the screams he makes in his sleep.

 

All civility has dissolved from her interactions with Nebula. The other woman glares at her constantly and won’t be in a room with Loki for longer that it takes to leave. Valkyrie supposes it must hurt to see someone come back and so she tries not to blame her. Most of the time she doesn’t succeed.

 

Loki is still an arsehole. Of course, she knew that all along but somehow it grates on her more. Sometimes when he walks into a room all the wind is knocked out of her because it’s just so much to see him alive. And then he’ll open his mouth and she’ll want to hit him again.

 

“It was cruel,” he says to her one day, as the Commodore finishes its daily jump and the whole ship shakes. “What I did when we fought on Sakaar. I still lost, but it was cruel all the same.”

 

Valkyrie studies him. She knows it’s as close to an apology as she’s ever likely to get, and he doesn’t exactly look sorry, but she knows with Loki that what she’s seeing isn’t necessarily what’s really there.

 

“You’re right” she says. “It was cruel.”

 

Occasionally they drink together. The four of them slumped against the bar passing a bottle between them until Nebula, then Tony, and eventually Loki keels over and it’s just her and the drink and her thoughts. They don’t talk much anymore. Tony and Loki trade barbs like it’s a competition (and maybe it is) and sometimes Valkyrie joins in. But they never say anything.

 

It doesn’t matter though, Midgard is finally approaching.

 

Just over a month. It feels like longer but that’s all it’s been on the _Commodore_ since they left the ship burning in space. Valkyrie knows she would have flown right into a supernova if she’d had to make the trip alone, carrying bodies in the hold. _Small mercies_ , she thinks, and laughs until she throws up.

 

She follows the signal of the Asgardian escape pods. They’re broadcasting deliberately loud and there’s a slight warmth when she realises they’re doing it for her. So she can find them. Reminding her she still has a home.

 

The _Commodore_ alights with style. The ship can do style. It’s shitty in a fight, shitty for long haul space travel, shitty at saving fuel, but style it has in abundance. For a second she considers releasing the fireworks as they land.

 

Loki hangs back as the door lowers. Valkyrie narrows her eyes at him. He doesn’t look nervous, but Loki would probably die before he looked nervous to see his brother so she dismisses it. She wonders briefly if he is projecting an illusion and then decides she doesn’t care.

 

The land they’ve arrived in is beautiful. Mountains and lush forests and in the distance a towering city, but she doesn’t really notice it as she charges out of the ship because there are Thor and Bruce and they’re both alive and they’re fine and they’re surrounded by their people and the numbness fades just a little. Nebula and Tony are more subdued as they walk down the gangplank. Tony is still healing and Nebula is characteristically wary so they make their way slowly onto the ground. Thor lights up when he sees them and she has to look away from his brilliance.

 

“Tony,” he says. “It is very good to see you.”

 

“Good to see you too Point Break,” says Tony and Valkyrie stares at him. She can barely recognise the man. He is wearing a pair of the Grandmaster’s sunglasses - _where did he find those, when did he find those_ \- and an easy, confident smile. The difference in him is jarring and if she didn’t know better she’d believe it.

 

Nebula has clearly noticed it too and is definitely going to say something. Before she can the Commodore’s light show erupts. Loki stands in the door of the ship, his arms spread wide as fireworks explode behind him.

 

“Hello brother,” he says.

 

 _Oh Norns_ , thinks Valkyrie. _I love him._

**Author's Note:**

> Infinity War wouldn't leave me alone so I guess this happened. I wrote this in one day with no beta so it is what it is. Technically this is a one-shot BUT I've already started the next one BUT anyone who knows me knows not to expect it anytime soon. 
> 
> Obviously I should be using this brief burst of creative energy to work on We Build The Wall To Keep Us Free (or even my uni work lol) but I've literally been thinking only about Infinity War ever since it came out. I'm a shell of a person.
> 
> There’s a now prequel up about Tony and Nebula’s journey from Titan to meeting Val and I’m working on the next part of the series! It’s looking like there’ll be three parts (plus the prequel and outtakes). I really hope you like them!


End file.
